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The impetus toward changing the
standard of industrial development inspired out-of-the-box
thinking regarding every facet of the development process. The
team was to implement a number of environmental objectives into
the base scope. The concept of mechanical and electrical
systems was to optimize energy with considerations for renewable
sources. The program included water treatment as a precious
resource through reuse and to release into the ecosystem water
that was clean and healthy. The soils and landscape were to
establish wildlife habitat. The air was to be protected from
toxic emissions by releasing only healthy emissions. And the
waste management was to be reduced for buildings and
production. The development team brought these general
environmental objectives into the heart of developing the
automotive program, which was valued at over three hundred
million dollars.
The industrial development process
and its participants have evolved from a set of standards that
were based on years of manufacturing experience. The
implementation of sustainable innovations required a cultural
change in the way of thinking for the team that provided a
positive and proactive environment toward accepting change. The
sustainable development placed higher emphasis of understanding
value in terms of operating efficiencies and life-cycle cost
analysis. The sustainable development team’s role included the
active participation in translating the sustainable ideals into
reality. It was necessary for each of the sustainable
engineering initiatives to be packaged within a business case
from which the owner was able to appropriate judgment and
funding. The team accepted sustainable change as a new major
influence within the industrial development process. The team
also constantly reviewed better ways to engineer, purchase and
construct the sustainable systems while providing a basis for
the owner to make best practice decisions founded on the
business case. Intense scrutiny was applied to technical
details, installation procedures, availability of new products,
cost ramifications, and procurement. The theme was repetitive:
start with a sustainable goal and continually improve upon the
method and content of achieving the sustainable goal in order to
build a sustainable reality.
According to Loren Klevering of
Arcadis Giffels, between the talents of all of the project
professionals, the team had at their fingertips all of the
expertise needed to successfully develop the chosen sustainable
concepts, the graphic depiction of the concepts, the
understanding of options for material selection and installation
within the available technology, plus the appreciation of cost
and schedule impact. The latter consideration drove the team to
take the practical actions necessary to bring the concept into
construction reality as a beneficial component of the completed
project.
William Kroczolowski of Arcadis
Giffels explains that: “Every effort was made to hold on to the
original concept. At the initiation of the project, the design
team had developed a very thorough understanding of the Dearborn
Truck Plant needs by going through a series of interviews and
work sessions with the buildings’ end user groups. They
established what were the users’ expectations, and tried to
verify that they all were necessary and fell within conservative
time frame and budget scenario.
During the course of the project,
changes occurred that would impact the team’s ability to satisfy
these expectations. Rather then abandoning the expectations, the
team chose to attempt to prepare all solutions in a way that
would ultimately accommodate the users’ end needs. The key word
here is ultimately. In most cases a new approach was considered,
where priorities had to be reestablished in order to
differentiate the initial needs and the end needs. In other
cases, scaled down efforts were applied in order to provide only
what was needed in the foreseeable future. In all approaches,
the most important element was to keep everyone informed of the
developing situations and the resulting solutions. This was
done in order to minimize the impact of surprises at the end of
the project, or the first time users walked into their workspace
to begin training on how to assemble accomplish their particular
vehicular assembly task.”
The initial costs of incorporating
sustainable initiates into an industrial project include time
and capital expense. Over time and experience, these learning
curves will result in commonplace savings to future
developments. Ford has demonstrated full commitment to
sustainable design within the industrial process. This project
was successfully completed not only without compromising
sustainability but with an eye toward expanding the sustainable
nature of the systems initially considered. The Ford Rouge
Center includes an unprecedented implementation of innovative
sustainable initiatives…
(Click on logo for a complete
list of sustainable systems)
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